Facebook top boss: It’s not our job to ‘filter out’ fake news
A top Facebook boss has written a blog post explaining why he doesn't think Facebook should be in charge of binning 'false news' from the social media site
FACEBOOK has admitted that the battle against fake news "will never end" in a lengthy blog post published today.
But the senior employee who wrote the post also described how he doesn't believe Facebook should "filter out" misinformation, either.
"Even a handful of deliberately misleading stories can have dangerous consequences."
"We're committed to this issue of transparency because it goes beyond Russia."
"Without transparency, it can be hard to hold politicians accountable for their own words."
"Democracy then suffers because we don't get the full picture of what our leaders are promising us," he wrote, in what looks like a subtle snipe at US President Donald Trump.
"This is an even more pernicious problem than foreign interference."
"But we hope that by setting a new bar for transparency, we can tackle both of these challenges simultaneously."
He went on to say that it's not Facebook's job to filter out fake news, even though people expect the company to do so.
"In the public debate over false news, many believe Facebook should use its own judgement to filter out misinformation."
"We've chosen not to do that because we don't want to be the arbiters of truth, nor do we imagine this is a role the world would want for us."
"We've made it easier to report false news, and have taken steps in partnership with third-party fact checkers to rank these stories lower in News Feed."
"Even with all these countermeasures, the battle will never end."
Chakrabarti says that the misinformation campaigns targeting Facebook users are "professionalised, and constantly try to game the system".
"We will always have more work to do," he adds.
The post comes just days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg issued his own statement on plans to tackle fake news on the social media site.
The Harvard dropout, whose website attracts more than two billion users per month, said he hoped Facebook could fix a "divided world".
Zuckerberg also vowed to defend "against interference by nation states" and make sure that "time spent on Facebook is well spent".
Facebook is expected to make significant changes to its News Feed in the coming months.
It's believed that posts from businesses and the media will be de-prioritised, while posts from your friends and family will appear higher up in your feed.
There's no set date for these changes yet, however.